Pyrophobia
by The Light's Refrain
Summary: ONESHOT Takuya turned his back on destiny, so destiny stabbed him in the back.


_Hello! Happy birthday to me! XD_

_This is my Digimon Bingo entry for the prompt inconsiderate. It also uses the following prompts from the DFC Festival's Tunnel of Horror: something burning, skin peeling, lights go out. And, most important of all, this is Remi's prizefic for winning my contest a while back :D. Hope you like it, Remi!_

_Okay, this is a case of "What if Takuya decided to prevent himself from going back to the Digital World?" Probably not the newest idea ever, but I hope my version is a good read at least._

**_Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon. I don't need my house burning down b/c of a bunch of pyromanics, thank you. And that's just the goggleheads..._**

Pyrophobia

"_A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of its life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour." - P. G. Wodehouse_

The scent of birthday candles seared his nostrils.

Takuya didn't understand it. He loved cake, even if it wasn't his own. _Especially _when it wasn't his own. Yet all he could smell was the burning wicks, and all he could watch was the tiny fires convulsing on the melting wax sticks. Suddenly he felt the urge to run out the door, to be anywhere but here.

But he stayed, because some other part of his mind told him going someplace else was a very, _very_ bad idea. He and his family sang happy birthday to his little brother Shinya, who was both soaking up the attention and getting impatient for his cake. Shinya had already downed three pieces when he got a text and bustled out the door. Socialization hour was over.

The silence afterward unnerved Takuya. He didn't know why. Still getting the feeling that he should stay inside no matter what, he decided to vegetate in front of the TV while consuming the rest of his cake. He flipped through the channels.

A train howled as it rushed by in a commercial, as tickets to some amusement park rained down from its steam blasts. Takuya wanted nothing to do with trains, or train stations, or even free trips to new places. He went to the next show.

A nature program on wolves in the mountains. Takuya was almost excited watching it, but a terrible knotted feeling manifested in his gut as he kept going. When one of the wolves got mauled by a cougar, Takuya abruptly switched stations.

The local news, saying something about an arsonist, then thrusting on footage of a forest on fire…fire…oh God, _fire_-

And then the power went out, and everything was dark. Takuya heard his mother say some surprised comment, but Takuya barely cared about that. The flames on the TV screen were still emblazoned onto his retinas. The burning smell broke forth again, only it was not burning candles, but burning flesh. The scent was almost delicious. Takuya wanted to throw up.

What was this darkness doing here? What was _he_ doing here, alone? He should have been doing _something_, even if he didn't understand what. He didn't understand much of anything today. These thoughts…What were these thoughts? Fire, fire _everywhere_, around him, above him, below him, _within_ him, as everything _burned_: family, friends, house, possessions, his spirit…a spirit not his own? Where was his spirit? _Where was it?_

And under the blistering heat his skin peeled, only the scales of a dragon lay beneath. The more it was shed, the more the scales showed. The more the world will know that he was a monster, a monster who…who…

What did he _do_? It must have been something unspeakable. Why else would this guilt gobble him up like a vat of acid? He should have been doing _something_. How could he leave anyone behind, friend or family? How could he be so _inconsiderate_, to betray and then forget the act of the betrayal, and the names of the betrayed?

But he didn't want the fire. He didn't want the fire. _He didn't want_-

The darkness fled, and the shades with them, as the lights stuttered back on. Takuya didn't know how long he spent blankly staring at the static-filled TV, trying to comprehend the sword-sharp nightmare that just cut through his mind and sanity. Even now it slipped away like afterbirth. But even as the memories melted, Takuya's anxiety did not. It was, however, shifting from stabbing urgency to soft regret. Did he miss something? Then, even the anxiety began to dissolve, leaving only a dull disquiet.

Why did he dislike fire? He just disliked fire. Wasn't that always the case?

The lights flickered on and off for a while. The intermittent darkness periods made Takuya more sad than uneasy. Then, eventually, the lights made a full, glorious return.

His little brother Shinya, however, did not. He didn't come home the next day either, or the next week, or the next month.

According to the reports, the last time anyone saw Shinya was at the Shibuya train station. His eyes were gaping at his phone, like he was witnessing heaven, as the elevator door clamped shut.

His whole family searched for him everywhere. Takuya most of all, the burning fear and guilt chomping down as his brother remained missing. Because he knew, somehow, that this was his fault.

He was trapped by fire in his dreams. Sometimes he saw Shinya within that fire, as the flames towered ever higher. But Takuya could never touch him because of the scorching heat, or scream loud enough to drown out the inferno's roar. He was not the fire's master.

He never considered that anything would happen to his brother outside of schoolyard antics. He had never considered being forlorn, isolated, haunted by veiled consequences.

He had never considered _anything_.

IIIIII

Yet, Takuya was found by a boy named Koji. Had they met before? He seemed so familiar. And this Koji seemed to almost know him too. Maybe they had passed each other while riding a train? Or in another life?

Grief took hold, because Takuya felt that if this boy was here, yet Shinya was still not, then his little brother was never coming back. But, knowing that this boy lived, and his friends too, and they still wanted to associate with him…a darkness he was unaware of grew lighter.

Takuya had never considered that he would be weeping in front of this almost-stranger, while the sun burned hotly and brightly above.

But Takuya had never considered being forgiven either.

_IIIIII_

_Okay, so the basic idea is that Takuya prevented himself from going back, which cancelled out the whole being chosen thing, so he never got called. But the Digital World still needed someone to be the LW of Fire, so Shinya got chosen instead. However, while he and the others were able to save the Digital World, Shinya ended up dying in the process b/c he wasn't as high quality LW as Takuya would have been. Takuya and the others still have some memory of the previous timeline though, so even though he didn't go on the adventure, they still become good friends later (and Takuya would gain some knowledge of the Digital World when the others tell him about Shinya)._

_Does that make sense? Rewritten timelines are confusing XP. _

_Well, I hoped you enjoyed either way! Feel free to let me know what you think!_


End file.
